


Magykal Love

by GoddessOfGanon



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen, Mild angst in some, NSFW, They're still pretty fluffy., prompt fics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-02-08 23:04:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12874947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoddessOfGanon/pseuds/GoddessOfGanon
Summary: A collection of NSFW drabbles from my Tumblr~





	1. Behind Closed Doors (Julian x GN!MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tags: Public sex, gender neutral MC

The Rowdy Raven was living up to its namesake more reverberantly than you can remember in night’s past. Week’s past, in fact, that you’ve been slinking alongside alleyways from the palace, bereaving your presence from the Countess into the arms of a doctor you’ve found yourself to be dangerously fond of as of late.

You had resolved to keep your distance from him since the moment he materialized in your shop, wearing that mask with the reflective red eyes. That dissolved somewhere along the way, though you aren’t sure which word, which touch, which look of his it was that enamored him to you so wholly. And now, the desire to seek him out in the night flares as soon as you finish dining with the Countess, and are permitted to walk the castle grounds or attend to matters at your leisure. Portia usually keeps you company during those times, though more sparsely now as the Countess’s headaches become more frequent. You don’t wish to imagine what Portia’s reaction would be if she knew you traded this time for an evening spent in her brother’s arms, shrouded in the dimness and dust of a seedy tavern.

You make your way through The Rowdy Raven, keeping your head low as tankards are passed around on either side of you, filled and drained and struck against the hardwood of the bar with the satisfied sigh of the tavern’s patrons. You catch sight of Julian’s auburn curls beneath the low hanging lamplight first, in a booth set into the wall at the far end of the room, and unbidden you feel your mouth curl into a smile.

He doesn’t turn when you approach him, likely not having picked up the sound of your footsteps over the surrounding bustle, so you slide your fingers into the hair and the nape of his neck, feeling him tense, then relax as he turns to you with the glint of a grin tinging his lips.

“Funny, I was just thinking of you.” He beams, encircling your wrist with his hand and moving your knuckles to his lips. You expect a kiss, like the picture of a prince, though instead he flips over your hand and sets his lips to the inside of your wrist, trailing warm, glistening kisses to the crook of your elbow, until you gain the fine sense to pull your arm away.

“Do you see how many people are here?” You stammer, throwing a glance over your shoulder before nudging into the booth beside him.   

“Too many, for my taste. Something’s excited them.” He grumbles, winding an arm around your shoulder. You tuck yourself into his side, refraining to mention the announcement you and Portia had made in the square just that morning, the masquerade that will open the palace to the public once more. You change the subject, avoiding the path of conversation you walked down to come here, away from the impositions of the Countess. 

As the evening slips into night, candles waning to pools of wax as more and more patrons shuffle into the bar, you find you nearly have to shout to be heard over the raucous clamor of the tavern. You’d been speaking less and less, anyway, as hands slipped from shoulders to chests to waists, lips dropping to skin every sentence or so. You can feel Julian’s impatience surfacing, as what sighs and gasps he manages to elicit from you are hushed into nothingness. Tucked into a corner booth was about as private as surroundings went, and even then the overwhelming stauch of ale and packed bodies is starting to suffocate.  

“There’s a closet over there, you know.” Julian murmurs, his lips fit over the curve of your ear, and suddenly you can hear him perfectly. A shudder runs down your spine and you tighten your hand around his wrist, taking only a moment to consider before you’re dragging him from the booth, casting a surreptitious glance around your surroundings, ensuring no wayward eyes are fixed on the pair of you. There are so many bodies in the tavern, you worry your backwards step to the wooden storage closet set in the back wall beneath the stairs that lead to the upstairs lodging. Which is always an option, you consider for an unflighty moment. Yet, there is something pulling you towards the closet. Something tinged with the similar incline that caused you to pursue Julian when you first had the chance to. An intrigue that straddled the line of danger and mystery, questions that couldn’t be answered. Not that you were going to ask.

Julian slides into the closet first, pulling you in after him by an arm looped around your waist. The door slams shut with a near splintering resound that raises gooseflesh along your arms, which are soon enough pinned over you head as Julian presses his face to your neck.

“Someone might’ve heard that.” You mutter, though you feel any and all outside awareness begin to slip away as his lips move up and down the column of your neck, the heat he’d managed to suppress in the booth usurped by your newfound privacy. Fear that the sound had been heard by other patrons, and all eyes have fallen on the door you’re now concealed behind, fall away beneath his touch. The way he shapes his mouth around your throat, it’s as though he’s finishing off a tankard of something golden and intoxicating and  _not enough,_ as he tips his head further back to get the final sip of forth clinging to the walls of the glass, pushing you into the wood grain of the closet wall, his own body flush against yours. It’s as though he’s reaching for something behind you, with one hand wrapped around your wrists and the other clamped over the slope of your waist.

By now, the babble of the tavern has faded to a dull tin to your ears, but when it stops, you notice. A hush, one that hasn’t reached you from behind the doors, certainly hasn’t reached Julian, as his hand has traveled from your waist to the pool of heat at the apex of your thighs, eliciting a gasp that you bite down on your bottom lip to smother.

Your name. Someone is saying your name on the other side of the closet door.

_“ … I could’ve sworn I saw her come in here …”_

Your eyes have adjusted well enough to the darkness to make out the white of Julian’s eyes, now narrowed in listening. This pitch of the voice is unmistakable;  _Portia._

“Is this official business for the palace, miss? Can’t imagine there’s much the Countess’ll want to do with this lot.” You recognize the voice of the barkeep, not unkind, but watchful. Surely, the contrast provided between the colorful, spring-stepped handmaiden and the rugged clientele of the tavern hasn’t gone unnoticed. You hear a shout, indistinguishable from your vantage, that you can only assume is a comment on this. You’re worrying your lip between your teeth, straining to hear what’s being said, though your focus is splintering beneath Julian’s hand, which hasn’t ceased in stroking you.

“How far are you willing to go with your sister on the other side of the door?” You gasp between clenched teeth. You don’t mean to sound challenging, even as the lowness of your own voice registers in your ears, causing a blush to spread down your neck, past the marred column of love bites blossoming there. Julian cocks a brow, drawing his lower lip between his teeth as he mulls over the prospect. You’re nearing your peak already, though it hasn’t helped that he’s withdrawn his touch to work at the ties of your tunic instead.

“I’ll go as far as you’ll take me, my dear.” He murmurs sweetly, one gloved finger sliding along your jaw to tilt your mouth back to his. You think to withdraw, tell him you were joking, but the thought falters when his lips slant over your own, and in this cramped box of a closet you’re breathing only each other. There is a world on the opposite side of this door that you must return to, you know that. Yet, you cannot bring yourself to stop it from slipping away, just for a little while.  Julian is as riled as you’ve ever seen him, the threat of Portia uncovering you two entwined this way seems to have staked the intensity of his touches to something with more firey than you can recall, and as far as he can portend he’ll last you know it won’t take prolonged effort to finish him off, you can tell in the frantic way he pushes his hips align to yours, the moans he’s swallowing along the skin at your chest that he’s working between his teeth. It isn’t just pain he likes, you realize. It’s danger.

Every movement he makes, curling and pressing and  _wanting_ is a test of your resolve, and you feel yourself nearing the fervid white tensure break of your peak. Yet, like a lingering storm cloud, in the back of your mind, you’re wondering how much time you have left with him. If this is what it takes for you to be together, in this moment, then so be it. You can answer to Portia later. You can sneak out of the back of the tavern with your conscious clouded but your ardor satisfied. It’s a dull thought, having to slink back to the palace and wash his smell off of you, cover this indents of his lips on you, but Julian is worth it, worth all of it. So you let the world wait, and you let go, breath heaving against Julian’s neck, twining your arms around him and whispering to the shell of his ear just how much of everything he means to you.


	2. Starry Night (Asra x F!MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tags: Female MC

Closing time. A wave of relief courses through you as you extinguish the lanterns outside the shop and slide the lock bolts home. The stillness of the air settles like a fine dust over the room, darkening in the sunset, gold as glitter as far as you’re concerned.

You feel your knees begin to tremble with fatigue when a pair of arms snake around your waist and draw you into the solace you’ve been sinking since dawn. Asra nuzzles into your neck, as you recline your head against his shoulder, turning your ear to his chest to listen to the comforting thrum of his pulse, which you take deep breaths in order to match your own. He still smells like somewhere foreign and faraway, having returned just that morning from one of his travels, from a week of you aching for a spot in his arms, from nights of having your sole comfort be the stars you watched twinkle above in similar sleeplessness as you were the same ones watching over him.

It was tempting to close the shop there and then, before he’d even set his bags on the floor, but you knew you had too many reliant customers and couldn’t stake yourself on closing your business to them. You’d learned some new potion recipes while Asra was away too, which drew more than the regular cast of customers. Complex recipes too, ones which you didn’t have the time to teach him, rendering him hapless to your aide, better suited for fetching herbs and assisting with customers than actually helping you refill the consistently thinning supply as bottles were bought as soon as you filled them. He’s been antsy all afternoon, too; you could tell he had something to tell you, but the near constant stream of customers throughout the day made it impossible for him to drag you away for more than a moment, and even then he’d get distracted with stealing a kiss or two from you, his breath pooling on his lower lip with some word unspoken, before the bell above the door tinkled and you were summoned to the front counter.

“You work yourself far too much, petal.” Asra murmurs from behind you, his warm breath ghosting over your ear and down your neck. You sink further into him, pushing your back against his chest. He ducks briefly to gather your knees to his chest, carrying you like a bride to your shared living quarters above the shop. You turn your head to his chest, allowing your eyes to flutter closed as you’re taken up the stairs and set down on the pillowy, haphazard stack of blankets that cover Asra’s bed.

You blink your eyes open just as Asra lowers his face to yours, sealing your lips in a slow, harmonious kiss, slipping further from the rushed pull and draw of your earlier kisses into unhurried strokes, his hands sliding along your arms as you curl your fingers around the front of his tunic to hold him close.

“Now, tell me about your trip.” You say after breaking away to breathe, drawing yourself upward into a seated position, leaning towards him in expectancy of whatever lively tale he’ll spin of his most recent journey, and reveal to you what trinkets he brought home for you. He never fails to return with a dozen or so fascinations for you to marvel over, his way of apologizing for being away for so long.

“Not worth speaking of.” He says dismissively, pushing his mouth back against yours, dragging you into his lap and smoothing his palms over the back of your knees to slide you nearer to him. You make a startled noise in the back of your throat that he attempts to chase with his tongue, and you’re far too startled, far too pleased, to pull away right at that moment.

At last, you set your palms to his chest, drawing back with a raised brow. Your chest is heaving under the strain of your own breath. “You’ve had this look on your face all day that you had something you wanted to say to me.”

“Not. Speak.” He repeats, punctuating his words but dropping his hands to your hips and pulling you flush against him. Blush pours over your chest as you’re aligned with the heat of him, the achingly radiating draw that you cannot believe you hadn’t realized sooner. You certainly would have closed shop sooner if you had.

“You really missed me, huh?” You smirk, winding your arms around his neck. Up close, you see the fog of his own erotism, the high blush set in his cheeks and the redness painting his lips. It’s a satisfying sight, paired with the knowing that you alone are the one that can do this to him, and likewise that he can so similarly unravel you.

“I miss you always, but not the point.” He replies distractedly, and you allow him to capture your lips once more as his hands set to unlacing the ties of your tunic, until it slips from your shoulders to pool at your waist.

“Lay down. Let me take care of you.” He rasps, the words scaling up the sides of his throat in raw desire. “Please.” He adds after a moment, when the command of his tone reaches his ears. You recline against the pillows, keeping yourself propped on your elbows as you watch him move over your body, laying kisses to the newly exposed terrain of your chest, shaping his mouth over a nipple while his thumb draws lazy circles around the other.

“You work so hard,” He murmurs against the skin at your breastbone, looping over pathways with his lips first, then tongue, raising the nerves of your body to stand at attention to his touch. “I just want to take care of you.” By degree, he moves from your chest to the trembling plane of your stomach while he works on pulling your leggings and underclothes down your hips and casting them along with your tunic to the floor, where they land in near silent disregard. His hands lay flat over your thighs when he nudges your legs to spread, thumbing circles around the puncture of your hip bones until the shudders that rake your body from anticipation settle to a tolerable smoulder.

He begins with gentle strokes, massage-like motions to your inside walls that have you keening, arching your back towards him and sighing, singing his name. His palm pushes against your clit with each movement, adding more pressure as his fingers slip deeper into you.

You feel radiant, ebullient, like each touch to your skin makes you lighter, and if it weren’t for Asra’s body pinning you to the bed, you’d float right from it. A whine sounds from the back of your throat when he pulls away, settling back on his knees as his gaze travels over you in winding, reverent strokes. “You’re so fucking beautiful like this.” He says, so softly you almost don’t catch it.

You feel your eyes widen. He rarely, if ever, uses such strong language. There’s something about hearing him speak that way,  _about you,_  that makes your swallows thicker and blush darker. And Asra, a stranger to none of your motions, notices. He dips his head, split in a smile, to press his mouth to where his fingers had been moments before. And he keeps pressing, all lips and tongue and teeth.

And you do float away, and it’s all white, all air. There’s stars across your vision, refracted reflections of Asra’s smiling face as he pulls away from you, drawing his sleeve over his mouth, coated in your essence. He’s still fully clothed, you realize, and it doesn’t seem he touched himself through the whole thing. He really was serious about taking care of you. Then, he always is.

When you manage to return from the sky, you curl into his chest and promise you’ll return the favor the next morning. You kiss him once more on the lips before you slide into sleep, joining the stars in the sky once more.  


	3. Sing a Song of Me (Asra x GN!MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tags: Handjobs, gender neutral MC

_‘I’ll draw you a bath.’_

The sentence itself is a miracle. Having spent a full day hunched over your potions workbench, fiddling with a rather difficult tincture, you ached from every bone, each sigh you breathed a plea for reprieve. It hadn’t helped that your thoughts were anchored elsewhere, straying from the work in front of you to worries over a certain magician, who should have returned to your shared dwelling that morning, and hadn’t.

In fact, when he had returned, you had been too involved in your wayward thoughts to hear the door creak. The first he saw of you was the tense line of your shoulders, hard and curled over the workbench. You hadn’t softened when he wrapped his arms around you, though your lungs did deflate their pent up breath as you took in Asra’s honeyed scent, warmed by travels to some distant desert.

Feeling your coiled shoulders against his collarbone, he had suggested a bath. And now, as you sink into the steaming waters Asra had prepared while you finished your work for the day, you discover the miracle has doubled in reward. The steam clears your mind while the heat draws the tension from your shoulders. The stray sounds of Asra unpacking his bags in the other room comfort you further. You feel your heart relax. He’s home, where he belongs.

You begin humming to yourself as you gather the soothing water over your arms and legs, which break the surface of the relatively small tub. Compared to the bathing pools at the palace, it’s not more than a puddle, though the comparison is far from your mind this evening. Your hums pick up a tune, something old, and while you can’t recall where you learned the lyrics, they fall from your lips with melodic ease.

A sound from the hall interrupts you midverse, something between a cough and a gasp. “Asra? Is that you?” You call over your shoulder. You’d left the door partway open to let out steam, and only manage to catch sight of his shoulder as he moves from the doorframe.

“Are you okay?” You ask, curling your fingers around the rim of the tub, poised to rise and make sure he hasn’t caught some foreign illness on his travels.

“I’ve never heard you sing, is all.” You hear him say from the hall. “It’s lovely.” He adds hurriedly, in the case you mistook his reaction of shock as repulsion. He shifts, and you manage to meet his gaze. “Darling. Lovely.” His face has broken out in a blush.

“Thank you.” You whisper, hoping he takes any blush of your own as solely perpetrated by the steaming water.

“I-I bought you some of that lavender oil you like to use.” He supplies, taking one step into the washroom as he reminds himself of his purpose. He holds a small purple vial in his hand, the bath oil you revere but have yet to find sold in any local market. A grin spreads across your face, and you wonder if he’d simply stumbled upon the oil at a bazaar, or if he’d made it his mission to secure an item to bring home to you. Either way, it means he’d been thinking you at least an ounce as much as you’d been thinking about him.

You extend your hand to him, ignoring the rivulets of water that slide from your arm to the floor. Asra’s still standing there with his mouth agape, though he keeps his eyes pointedly avert from your form within the water.

Now, you are no stranger to proximity with Asra. Like the shop itself, the living quarters above are narrow and wound around themselves with shelves lined to the brim, drawers that shudder beneath the weight of their contents, and packed halls that can only be passed through one body at a time. You manage when you’re alone, but when Asra’s home it’s a story of sharing the sole bathroom sink, hands and shoulders brushing when passing rooms, and changing clothes where you had space, rather than privacy.

Nevermind all the fumblings in the dark, the frantic grapple to impress the shape of each other’s bodies to memory.

Yet, something here is different. The air is charged, and you can feel the treble of your nerve endings, hinged on the slow steps Asra’s making to cross the room to reach you. When he’s close enough to grab, moving to set the oil bottle on the ledge beside you, you seize the front of his tunic, soaking in the crescendo of the moment when your lips crash against his.  

Anchored in each other, though otherwise roving to explore every angle, every curve of lips upon lips, the two of you continue to kiss until a lack of oxygen yields you to part.

“And I thought the best thing to come from your lips was your voice.“ His laugh sounds like bells in the early morning. His mouth is split in a grin, bearing down on you like a smaller sun, one with its own gravity that draws the two of you together before you have time to consider the pull of your own moon. Must be magnetic, you reason. It is nature itself that guides the path of his lips from your chin to your jaw, open mouthed blossoms down to your chest. His warm breath fans down your chest, raising every nerve in your body to stand on its end. He draws back to take in the path of pink flaring across your skin, shameless now, his earnest, glowing eyes drink in the sight.

“Lovely.” He whispers again, as if to himself.

Placing your palms over his chest, you push him back towards the hall, out of the washroom and into your shared bedroom across the hall. Asra stops when the backs of his knees hit the bed frame, clamping his hands over your hips. You break contact from his lips, ducking your head to drop kisses down his neck, following the rivulets of water that have fallen from your hair to his skin as you push him to lay on his back.

The bottle of lavender oil he’d brought you presses against your hip, an afterthought only loosely held between two of his fingers. With an idea taking shape in your mind, you pluck the bottle from his hands and uncork it, taking in the lulling scent that stills your rapid beating heart. It’s a wave of calm amidst an otherwise thunderous scene, and you find you don’t want to put it away just yet. Tipping the bottle sideways, you collect a generous amount of oil on your palm, turning it over in your other hand until both are coated in the translucent lilac oil.

Reclining back on your knees, set on either side of his hips, you settle your elbows against your thighs, taking in the staccato rise and fall of Asra’s chest, the flicker of his eyes between your hands, your eyes, and back. You skim your fingertips over his hipbones, making shimmery oily trails across his skin, tracing a path to where he’s heated and wanting and pulsing to leap to your touch. You hand slides down the dip of his thighs before you take his erection in one hand, gliding smoothly over the throbbing skin with slick dexterity. Asra groans, sinking further into the mattress. His hands are curled around the wooden bed frame, knuckles bearing white when you bring your other hand around him, working his member in tight motions between two fists. Time slips away. You cease counting the number of breaths he takes before they turn into gasps, the spasms of his sternum that turn into shudders.  

“I’m close, I’m so close.” He breathes, arching his spine against the bed, thrusting himself into your hands. You realize, upon his words, that you’re not far from your peak either. You have never pleasured him like this before. You’ve taken his length in your hand to guide him inside you, palmed him through his trousers to gauge if he was ready for you, but this- taking him between your palms with seemingly all the direction and confidence in the world- was new. As your thoughts catch up to you, your movements falter, causing Asra to whine.

“Please, keep going.” His hands snake around your wrists to rub small, urging circles onto your palms with his thumbs. “I am not above begging.” He states blankly, not breaking his gaze with your own. His pupils are wide, but steady. There’s no submission in his tone, nothing that leaves him surrendered in his position beneath you, pleading with his hips against your thighs. How is it that you’re the one sheepish and slow when he’s the one pinned to the bed?

“You really want this?” You breathe curiously, swirling the slickness that’s collected on the tip of his member beneath your thumb. He’s undone by you, which is something of a marvel. A simple twist of your wrist and he’s arching against the bed,

“I want this,” He moans, hands sliding to your hips, running his thumbs along the crease of your thighs. “Please. I want you.” And beneath the fever of lust you hear the surge of love in his voice, the source of his avidity for  _your_  touch, the sole benefactor of his affections. And when you smile, he does too.

“I want to hear you sing, too.” You whisper against the shell of his ear. You settle yourself above him, rising into position. Carding your fingers through the white thatch surrounding his pulsating length, you lift your hips and savor the gasp that sounds when you at last sheathe yourself inside him, settling lower onto his length until your hips connect. A gasp shoots through Asra’s cheeks, followed by a drabble of nonsensical murmurings that slip from his trembling lips, all praise and song of you. His voice is beautiful.

Asra bucks beneath you, jerking wave after wave of euphoria from either of you. His hands are at your shoulders, kneading the tensed cover of muscle with hurried, grinding movements. You moan into his neck, feeling the coil of the morning’s stress unwind beneath his fingers. You press yourself against him, further into him, until stars prickle the backs of your eyelids like the rise of tears.

Asra comes before you, thanks to your earlier work. He spurs you on through his own peak until you follow shortly after, flipping you onto your back for a few final spurs to the end of your own symphony, compliment to the melody of your duet of moans exchanged into each other’s mouth.

You draw yourself onto your elbows, mind still spinning with the music as you watch his now flaccid member withdraw from you, dripping with your combined essence as Asra reclines back on his knees. His bare chest reflects a sheen of sweat, curling the scattered hairs that gather at the base of his abdomen.

“You could use a bath.” You tease, sliding from the bed and holding out your hands to draw him to his feet.

“Only if you join me.” He returns, winding his arms around your shoulders and planting lingering kisses up and down your neck. Shuddering still, and laughing heartily, you cannot help but agree. You were just thinking this calls for an encore.


	4. Doctor, Doctor (Julian x F!MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tags: Slight roleplay, slight m!dom, female MC

_“You look like you’re waiting for someone.”_

You start at the silky voice that materializes behind you, slinking out from the shadows of an alleyway beneath the cover of a black cloak. You rise from the steps outside your shop, which has remained uninhabited the past few days you were at the palace, suppressing the urge to return home, to the man who you now include in the definition.

“I am, as a matter of fact.” You say, deciding to play along. “I have an appointment with a doctor that I would rather not miss.”

Julian’s teeth glint off the moonlight when he smiles, moving from the alley to join you at the steps, extending a hand to pull you to your feet. “Sounds serious.” He murmurs, raising your hand to his lips and peppering a line of kisses across your knuckles.

“Quite serious. But I trust the man caring for me irrevocably.” You savor the hitch in his breath after you say this, slinking from his grasp to draw a ring of keys from your pocket to unlock the front door of the shop. Julian follows at your heels, and in the same moment you’ve crossed the threshold his arms have encircled you, pinned you to the door, which slams resoundingly behind you. His lips yield to nothing, feverish against your own. You gasp into his mouth at the suddenness of it all, but soon find your knees buckling against the door as his tongue tangles with yours. You close your eyes instinctively, yet open them to find Julian’s intense gaze boring into your own. The inside of the shop is dark, but the glow of his eyes seem to cut through the dim with a light of their own. They’re hungry. They’ve been waiting for you.

“There’s something in your eyes tonight.” You gasp, tilting your head to the side to grant him further access to lather your neck with warm, tugging kisses.

“I’ve missed you.” He replies dismissively, as though this should have been obvious. “You … missed me too?” You don’t miss the edge to his voice that rises here, as he draws back from your neck, with a startle of doubt that cracks into his emboldened demeanor.

“Gods, yes.” You return, sinking your hands into his hair and pulling him close. “I thought about you every second.” You seal your lips along his, which seems to restore his confidence. He wraps his arms around you waist, hoisting you to his weight. You wrap your legs around his abdomen, locking your ankles together as he passes through the shop to the living quarters behind, all the while not releasing your lips. He drags his tongue over the roof of your mouth and you feel your limbs soften. It’s a lucky thing he’s holding on to you so tightly, otherwise you’d have slid into a puddle on the floor.

You don’t question the way he swiftly passes through to your bedroom, despite you never having brought him further than the frontroom of the shop in the past. You arch into him when he lays you down on the bed, chasing the shape of him until he pins you to his chest, his lips moving to once more lavish the column of your neck.

“What was that earlier, about trusting me?” His breath is hot at your ear. His voice doesn’t rise with the question, rather, darkens with a demand to hear it repeated.

“I trust you wholly.” You reply firmly. Julian chuckles, drawing his hands down your thighs while his eyes rove over your body appraisingly.

“Foolish words from a wise woman.”

“Shouldn’t a woman trust her doctor with her life?”

“Is that a challenge?”

You meet his hot gaze, his cocked brow. You nod.

With a devilish glint in his eyes and in his smile, he leans towards you, only to draw back suddenly, as though he’s remembered he’s left the stove on at home.

“What time is it?” He asks, drawing his hands from your thighs.  

You scramble to retrieve your pocket watch from the folds of your skirt, rising to lean on your elbow. “It’s midnight.” You’re about to ask him if Mazelinka has given him a curfew, but the broiling intensity of his gaze makes the quip shrivel in your throat.

“Oh, fantastic. You’re just in time for your appointment.” He laughs, though as breathless as he is it sounds more like a mere puff of air from his broad chest, swelled with humor. He’s grinning, all teeth, as his eyes continue to rove over you with an interest that’s a cut between light and dark, the depth of his arousal paired with something ravenous.

Without another word, he moves back up your body, bidding you to lay on your back. He takes what skin between his teeth he can reach, the length of your ear and neck, the dip of your shoulder. He doesn’t break skin, though the flare of heat that radiates from his touch is enough, and you know you’ll wake the next morning to blooming bruises and sallow indents of teeth.

“I dare say it’s unprofessional for me to say, but you are a divine creature. Darling, my darling,” He repeats in hushed murmurings as he tugs your clothes from your skin, discarding them onto either side of the bed. You raise your arms to his tunic, fiddling with the buttons with your shaking hands, but he captures your hands in his own to return them to your sides.

“Lay still, won’t you? Let your doctor do his work.”

Your skin takes on a scalding heat at his words. He’s removed the last of your clothing, and his hands are skimming your thighs, darting nearer to the pulse of heat that aches for his touch. It comes sooner than you expect. “Julian, gloves,” You gasp, as if it were something he’d forget. As if that were something he would not quite pointedly remember. No, Julian has not forgotten any scrap of clue to what pleasures you, and he most certainly remembers the way you shudder when he slides his gloved hands over your arms, an effect he’d recreate after removing them to a somewhat lesser effect. It is a bit of a jump, he will admit, to go from raising goosebumps on your arms to much further down.

He dips two fingers inside to spread open your walls, and you fight to keep your legs from clamping together around his hand. The rippled texture of his gloves provide a shock of new sensation, daring, almost clinical, which must add to the effect he’s aiming for. His gaze is fixed in scrutiny as his thumb passes over your outer lips, staring past what is pried open for his viewing. You wouldn’t be surprised if he pulled out his plague doctor mask to complete the atmosphere. But then, it would rather feel you being pecked at by daws when he moved to kiss you.

Though kissing seems to be the furthest activity on his mind. “Appears to be fairly deep.” He murmurs, lowering his face closer to your slit. You can feel his breath against you, though as alight as you are it feelings like flames fanning over your folds. And, seemingly discontent with this angle, he moves to sink a finger inside you, until he’s in to his knuckle. “Well lubricated,” He continues, sliding in another finger as you whine, the bursts of pleasure seeking to blind you. When he curls his fingers against your clit, you wonder briefly if the stars across your vision will ever go away.

He works this way for some time, scissoring and twisting his fingers and dragging them alongside your inner walls, pressing firmly with the pads of his gloves. His other hand is laid flat over your stomach, holding you in place and drawing small circles with his thumb beneath your belly button, causing you to shudder. When you do, he stops.

“Stand.” He tells you, rising from the bed. You blink for a few seconds as his words cut through the haze, then you push yourself onto unsteady legs. He guides you to the center of the room, where moonlight pours in from the windows to cast a white blue pool on the floorboards. You shiver as your own wetness slides down the inside of your thigh. This doesn’t go unnoticed by Julian, who, after making a slow slinking circle around your form, takes a stand behind you. He slides two fingers up your thigh to collect the wetness on two fingers of his glove. You look at him over your shoulder, watch as he takes his erect member from his trousers and slides the fingers coated in your essence down his length.

“Would you trust anyone else to do this?” He intones, moving forward to press his length between your legs from behind, pushing against your slit.

 _“No.”_ You whisper hoarsely, pressing your palms flat against the windowpane you’re facing to steady yourself. He lays his chin on your shoulder as his hands land on your hips, angling your rear outwards so that his length is in line with your entrance. You make a move to turn your head to slant your lips across his when he pushes into you. You release a strangled yelp against his cheek, and find your own met with the cool surface of the window as he pushes your body forward, sending ripples of shock through you at the sudden shift in temperature. The windowpane is soon fogged over with your breath, though you can still barely make out your reflection, open mouthed and bleary eyed.

“Good answer.” Julian replies, wrapping a hand around your chin to pull your face towards his, shaping your lips to his words as his mouth moves against yours. He drops his hand to your breast, smoothing his thumb over the mound, peaked in arousal. Heady moans drips from your lips, wanton and waiting for your climax, which rises eagerly in an expanding coil in your stomach. His other hand slides down your stomach, one finger extending to coil around your clit as he continues to piston himself in and out of you with force.

Without warning, he pulls you from the window back onto the bed, rolling you flat onto your back. He lays your ankles over his shoulders and slides back into you effortlessly, as your hands make tight fists into the sheets. The pulsing tide of your climax breaks, and a rain of sensation washes over you. Julian continues to push past your sensitive peak, moving against you as a babble of cries stream from your lips. Is it too much? Is it enough? Will it ever be enough?

He erupts not long after, tearing himself from you and spurting his essence over your stomach. He laughs, then, hands dropping to your stomach, running his palms over the slick plane and massaging the pearly liquid against your skin. He’s taken but moments to recover before his hands are back at your thighs, parting your legs to settle in between them.

“You know,” You pant. “A good doctor would let his patient rest after such a …  _thorough_  examination.”

“I guess I’m not a very good doctor then, am I?” He purrs, giving no pause before returning to his work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My writing blog is goddessfics.tumblr.com if you would like to make a request. :)


	5. For the First Time in Forever (Asra x F!MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter uses my MC, Solia. Takes places during Chapter VIII

_“You have me.”_

Asra’s words, hushed in reverence, echo in the secluse pocket of desert master and apprentice have found themselves in. The air inside the dim hovel is hushed, as though keeping its own secret. No one needs to know they’re here, whispering undisturbedly among the stars seeping into the whiteness of the morning light.

Solia’s eyes widen upon her master’s words, though there’s a set to the corner of her lip, edging itself into a frown, that doesn’t cease. Asra smoothes his thumb over the edge of her lip, his head quirked to a tilt.

“Is something wrong?”

She shakes her head by a fraction, turning her gaze away from his. “It’s just- I know I’ll have to wake up soon. Wake up from this. I mean … us, running away together.” There is a distant sadness in her smile. “Wouldn’t be the first time I dreamt it.”

Asra captures her idle hand and presses a kiss to her knuckles. “No dreams.” He assures her, coaxing a genuine smile from her with one of his own.

“Maybe so.” She concedes, nestling herself in the crook of his shoulder. He keeps a hold on her hand, flattening it over his heart she she can feel the steady rise of his pulse against her skin. “Certainly feels real.” She comments, tracing her fingers across his chest. “Still, I find myself unable to believe it. You and I, under the same sky. The two of us, and no one else. I could do all the things I’ve dreamed of doing to you beneath these remote stars.”

Her grin widens as she feels the leap in his pulse, though neither of them speak for some time. Solia is content to settle in his arms and revel quietly in their proximity, though Asra finds he does not relax quite as easily.

“… You can.”

“Hm?” Solia asks, raising her head from his chest. His eyes lock with her blush colored gaze, something pleading glimmering in the violet depths.

“You can do anything you want with me.” He repeats. “You can show me what you want to do to me.” And then her skin is prickling with a heat that she senses has nothing at all to do with the arid desert surrounding them.

Hands begin to wander, tugging at the corners of clothes, as mouths exchange kisses and breath and sound, grizzling moans and punctuated little gasps against the startle of skin to skin contact.

Solia cannot remember the last time her heart was made to pound this way. But something is there that is not unfamiliar. Some part of it, the shuddering breaths, the coiled ache in her belly, the keen building in her throat, has been felt before. “Asra,” She murmurs, pressing against his shoulder. Her tone is worried enough that he retracts himself immediately, at once alert that he’s done something wrong. There’s an apology poised on his lips, but she spares him. “Asra. Have we done this before?”

His movements halt, and so do hers, and they are forced to recline in the expanse of awkwardity and sorrow that now rests in the wrinkle of sheets between them.

“It was foolish of me to think you would not have forgotten, wasn’t it?” Asra murmurs, low and dejected and sorry.

An unbidden burst of light in his mind serves to backlight the memories, the frantic discard of clothing as they searched for each other in the dark, bodies bumping into each other until they connected in exactly the way they were yearning to.

“What was our first time like?” Solia asks, her voice straining against desperation to know, to remember, everything she has felt by his touch.

Asra’s head drops to her shoulder, eyelashes brushing her neck when his eyes squeeze shut. He pulls in a uneven breath that casts chills over the skin of her chest. “It was … rhapsodic. Extraordinary, absolutely.” He rears his head back to look at her, eyes scanning her face with a raw wave of something pitious. “I can’t imagine forgetting. The sounds you made, they were, I-” He swallows thickly, tightening his grip around her waist. “I still wake up to them sometimes.”

Solia’s hands curl around his shoulders, pulling him above her. She meets his gaze, pleading to the depths focused so intently on her, on this moment they once captured in the past.

“Where were we?” She pleads with him, searching his eyes so that she may see what he saw, once.

“The shop. Our bed. It felt like a different world … everything was so warm. Like now, I suppose. I had to leave, after that, some business for the palace, I don’t even remember what it was now, that’s how unimportant it seemed, compared to you. I stopped counting the days I’d been gone when I could no longer bear it. When I got back, you didn’t know me. The bed was never warm like that again. Our first time was our last.”

Solia swallows against the sob rising in her throat. She shakes her head to clear the tears prickling from behind her eyes and pulls Asra closer to her. Their lips are an inch apart, shaky breaths colliding to the unstable air. “Let’s not talk about the after. Tell me about what it was like before. During. Now, then.”

The ghost of a smile curls the corner of his lips. “I don’t know what made the air feel changed. I just knew something was different, the moment I walked through the door. It took the evening for you to feel it, too. We made dinner and ate by the fire, talking, but I made excuses to touch you. Fiddle with your hair, lean in and touch your knee.” Unbidden, it seems, his hand falls to her leg, his palm sliding down her thigh to rest over her knee. The other cards through her hand, sliding to the back of her neck to angle her face back to his, until their noses are touching. “Eventually you were nodding off against my shoulder. I didn’t want to think about how long you stayed up to wait for me, but I carried you to bed. I couldn’t sleep. I just wanted to watch you. That sounds weird, doesn’t it?” Their laughter bubbles in the space between them like the water Asra had risen from the well earlier that day. They’re quick to sober themselves, however, to continue the tale that’s brewing a tight, anxious coil in Solia’s chest.

“I dozed off, eventually. When I woke, you were awake too. And you told me-” He clears his throat, shaking off the rise of emotion that threatens to silence him. “You told me you could spend the rest of your life waking up beside me.” He cradles her face in his hands and draws her lips to his, urging gentle kisses that causes sweet, pecking sounds to rise in the dusty air. “I had to kiss you. I just had to.”

“You did more than kiss me, right?” She smirks, feeling dizzy beneath his attentions, the insistent press of his skin to hers. Her lips are tingling from his kisses.

Asra laughs, drawing the pad of his thumb down her neck. “It would have been enough just to hold you, but we weren’t thinking about that.”

“What happened next?” She asks, egging on her own breathlessness.

Asra hesitates, then, drawing his lower lip beneath his teeth as he mulls over a thought. “I’m sorry, Solia. This feels wrong, somehow. You don’t remember any of it, and it’s like I’m taking advantage of you by remembering what you’re unable to.”

“I’m asking you to make me remember.” She insists, curling her palms around his arms to hold him close to her. “I’m asking-”

“I know, but I-”

“Did you feel how wet I was?” She interrupts him, unabashed in her asking. Asra makes a choking sound in the back of his throat, and nearly topples from his spot on the bed. He sputters a few more times, still speechless, but Solia has no insistence to back down now.

“Did you have to finger me first?”

“No, but I did.” He admits, a beet red blush spreading from her cheeks down his neck.

“How many fingers?”

“Solia, you’re really-”

“-Show me.”

“You’re driving me crazy, please-” He gulps thickly. Perhaps he’s about to say  _stop_ , to halt this moment that’s unwinding his resolve so gorgeously. But it’s not fair to her, for her to want so blindly what he’s already taken from her. He tries telling her as much, but she silences him with a kiss, and he cannot ignore the  _sameness_  of it all. Solia pressing, urging him to unravel this way. She was the one that held him to their bed, her arms around his neck and thighs pitched on either side of his hips. And how he wanted her, like the wilting flower wishes for sun, yet he was worried, desperately so, that he was in the wrong, somewhere. His touches were wanting, but slight, withdrawn to his own worries. She was his apprentice, after all. And as much as she was endeared to him, she was vulnerable to him. She was beneath him. Solia had to remind him, over and over, how much she enjoyed being beneath him.

In the difference of years, it still has not come to make sense that someone so golden would want him. Yet, as it follows, who would he be to deny her anything?

Moving tortuously slow, Asra drags his hands down the silky fabric of her skirt, sliding beneath them at her ankles and raising the fabric to bunch around her hips, baring the honeyed skin of her thighs.

He can’t take his eyes off of her. “Can I-”

“Exactly what you did before. I want it to be the same.” Solia insists, taking a fistful of his tunic in her hands. He nods, and she relaxes, allowing him to slowly draw the gauzy layers of cotton and silk from her form. He peppers kisses to the skin that becomes exposed to him, and moves to follow suit with his own outer layers. They’re nearly bare to each other, aside from their undergarments.

“And now? What happens now?” Solia rises to her elbows, from the shadow of the alcove that entraps their bed. The sunlight filtering through the window reflects the wet trail of kisses that run between her breasts, heaving with heady breath.

Asra’s lower lip begins to tremble. He grabs it between his teeth to still it, but she’s watching him too intently for even the subtlest movement to go unnoticed.

“Say it.” Solia leans in close, as to not miss whatever he may only dare say once.

“You touched, um-” His hands slide over the front of his thighs, framing the tent of his underwear that pushes against her stomach when she sucks in a sharp breath, drawn between teeth. Solia’s eyes flicker between his face and the glaring indiscretion between them. Slowly, as to not startle him beyond the degree she intends to, she lowers her hands from his chest, along the rigid plane of his stomach and further, beyond the waistband on his smallclothes to reach the heat direct.

“Down here?” She asks softly. He nods, face flaming deep in a scarlet blush. “Both hands?” Asra covers his face with a hand and nods.

Solia smiles to herself and settles back on her knees, allowing her eyes to flutter closed and allow what she hopes is muscle memory to guide her movements from there, responding only further to the hitches in his breath and the tremors that push them closer together. There’s an indescribable elation that follows, as she forces her eyes open to drink in his expression. That she trusts him enough to do this. That he trusts her to do it. It speaks to their bond, the pulsating sense of a matched need between them.

She keeps to her rhythm until Asra clamps his hands around her wrists to stall her movements. “We need to stop here, if you still want to take this as far as the first time.” At his words, she releases his length, savoring the keen he lets out when she does so. She allows him to push her back against the pillows, taking her mouth in a heated kiss as he makes quick, trembling work of removing the rest of her clothing. “Arms around my neck,” He breathes against her ear. “Bend your knee just a bit more, there. Perfect. You’re perfect.”

“Do I look the same?” Solia asks, earnest to shape herself to the exact mold of his memory. She holds herself still, despite his roving looks making her want to quake and fall apart right then.

“You’re glowing, darling. You were then, too.” He swoops back down to take her lips, tugging pecks that threaten to whittle their remaining resolve down to its core. His fingers tease her, dipping in and out and around. Her spine curls against the bed when she feels his length slide against her, at last into her, and every other thought in her head collapses.

“Make me remember,” She whispers, hushed and wanting, over and over, straining against the rising tide of release in the pit of her belly. Asra moves fluidly, rolling his hips against hers, matching his remembrance as near he can, thrust for thrust and stroke for stroke. He empties himself into her, and prays she will know the recipe for the contraceptive tea she made for herself after their last time. 

He continues to move through the wave of his own release until she’s spurn to her own. Solia blinks against the light of stars as her orgasm washes over her, and at the same time, or maybe after, the tears pooling in her eyes begin to spill over her cheeks. She takes in a shuddering breath, followed by a sniffle, and turns her head into the pillow as her chest pitches to catch a sob.

“I’m sorry, I just-”

“It’s okay.” Asra soothes, brushing away the tears with the pad of his thumb. “You cried then, too.” He adds softly, but through the echo of her own tears she does not hear it.

“How could I forget? What is  _wrong_  with me that I could possibly forget?”

Asra gathers her in his arms, tracing shapes onto her back. “Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing at all.” He repeats it, bundling her as close to him as he can, urging her to steady her breaths against the even thrum of his chest. “Something was done to you. You have done nothing. We are going to make you remember.”

She turns her face to his neck, snuggling into his embrace. “I have loved you my entire life.” She murmurs, lips moving little more than what was absolutely necessary to push the words out, raising her trembling hand to glide along his cheek.

Asra takes up her hand with his own, pressing a lingering kiss to the center of her palm. “Only what you remember of it.” He replies sadly. “You’ve accomplished so much on your own, you musn’t forget. Loving must have been one of them, otherwise you wouldn’t love me so well.”

Solia shakes her head, which fans her hair across the pillow. She radiates a golden halo spurn against the blank cotton beneath her. “You are everything I was looking for, before I even knew I was looking. I believe that, truly.”

Asra is quiet, for a while. He has lost himself in the sound of her breathing.

“I believe it too.” He whispers, though she is now half asleep. He settles himself against the pillows in want to follow her. “We have the same dreams, after all.”


	6. Self Taught (Julian x F!MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompts were "Let me show you" and "No, I want them to hear us."
> 
> Tags: F!MC, slightly dom Julian, masturbation, angst

Wide, split arcs of moonlight break through the gauzy curtains of the windows in the guest chamber at the palace. It’s been about an hour since you gave up on sleep, opting to spend the rest of the dwindling night stargazing, rather than tossing and turning over the wealth of pillows heaped on the daybed.

Curled up on the sette beneath the windows, you start to feel yourself nodding off when the sound of scrabbling breaks through the still night air. You scan the horizon beyond the balcony railing, where the garden is still and the air seemingly unchanged, until you zone in on the tug of movement to your left. The stauch pile of fear rises in your throat. You watch a pair of slender fingers, clad in a familiar pair of black gloves, curl around the trellis framing the balcony. A sigh of relief deflates your gut, and you relax your hands from the fists they’d formed. It’s only Julian you realize. But, it’s Julian in the palace, and your heart is racing all over again. You spring forward unlock the balcony doors and catch his hands drawing him over the railing.  

“What are you doing here?” You hiss as harshly as you dare, pulling him into a crouch beside you. His cloak is dusted in brambles and leaves, passes of dirt staining the knees of his trousers. “How did you get past the guards?”

Julian rises to his feet and brushes a few stray leaves from his surcoat, seemingly unaffected by the coil of hysteria in your voice. “I’m here to see you, my dear. I thought that much would be obvious, that trellis leads to no one else’s balcony. As for the guards, I know their shifts, and how to avoid them. Or, to be more accurate, Pascha knows their shifts, and was kind enough to inform me.” You feel a blush sink into your cheeks at the thought of Portia detailing the route that has led Julian to your bedroom door. Was the indulgence worth the danger?

“Come inside, at least. Anyone could spot us our here.” You tug on his wrist, casting a glance to your left and right before ducking back into your chambers. Julian follows with an amused smirk, though you’re unable to return his highbeam smile with one of your own. “I don’t see what could not have waited for a time I could come see you.” You shoot him daggers over your shoulder as you cross the room and drop onto your bed, folding your arms while you wait for his explanation.

“You’ve been avoiding me.” He says simply, lowering himself to a seat on one of the plush cushions opposite your spot on the bed.

You roll your eyes. “I have  _not._ I’ve just been working closely with Nadia these past couple of days and haven’t been able to sneak away without raising suspicion.”

“All the more reason for me to come to you.” He replies, flashing his teeth in a smug grin.

You open your mouth to return a sarcastic tort that’ll wipe that unfairly handsome smirk from his face, when a spatter of noise from outside causes you to jump. You’re certain that it’s the knocking of a guard or some equally devastating character come to haul Julian away. You rush to the balcony doors, but find only rainfall, soft patters that are swiftly gaining the wind to make a storm. The trellis is slick and shiny, there’d be no way for Julian to leave the way he came without risking a certain fall to his death. The balcony is too high to drop from, either. Even if it was, the dirt ground below will soon be reduced to mud, and mud leaves footprints. You know Nadia is fond of taking morning walks on the palace grounds, and the last thing either of you would want her to see would be a trail of footprints that materialize at your quarters. Some magic would be of help in covering tracks, still, it would be cruel to send him home in the rain. He would have to stay for the night.

“You really shouldn’t be here in the first place.” You mutter resignedly, shooting a sidelong glance to the doors of your chambers. Not only locked, but barred with your own magic seal. There was some insurance in that, wasn’t there?

“Are you upset to have seen me?” He asks, cocking a brow in that lofty way of his, though you can sense the underlying malaise that lies in his question. He stands, as if to exit, and you’ve no doubt he’d launch himself from the balcony if he held a single doubt that you didn’t wish to see him, rain and mud and all. 

You shake your head, detaching for a moment from the startle of his sudden arrival to soak in his presence, which withers away the ache and longing that’s seemed to have consumed you in the days since you last saw him.

“I missed you too.” You reply, feeling your throat tighten. You sink into the embrace he offers, locking your hands together behind his back and turning your face into his chest, breathing deeply before rising on tiptoe to lay your lips to his. He responds in earnest, finger grasping the back of your tunic as your mouths rove over each other in a desperate, claiming dance.  _Too long._ The words echo through your being as you exchange kisses and breath.  _It’s been too long._

You guide him to your bed, the bed you’ve imagined getting him in to since the first night you slept in it yourself. You wind your fingers in his hair, tugging and tightening and swallowing the moans he releases into your mouth.

Clothing is quick cast aside, though you’re frequent to shush any too-loud moans or too-conspicuous drops of a boot to the floor. Once you’re nearly undressed, he slides his palm along the inside of your thigh. He runs a finger along your mound through the fabric of your underclothes, working until the wetness seeps through the fabric and collects on his palm. There, an idea seems to cross his mind, as he withdraws his hand and reclines alongside you on the bed, in seeming utter ignorance that he’s neglected to bring you to your peak.

You roll onto your side and keen keen into his shoulder, grappling for his hand to return it to the ministrations against your core. “You must remember to be quiet, darling.” He tuts, shaking off your hand. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to continue this yourself.” You flash a silent, pleading look at him, which only serves the crank the wattage of his smirk.

“Come on,” Julian laughs, a hot breath of air against your ear that causes you to shudder. “Show me how quiet you are when you touch yourself at night.”

“Julian!” You hiss, knocking at his shoulder with your palm. He raises a brow, not quite understanding your indignation. He watches the blush spread over your cheeks, steeping in implication. You can tell he’s trying to suppress the smirk that’s tugging at the corner of his lips, smothering it into a slight twitch.

“You mean to say you’ve never … ?”

You shake your head, certain by now your blush has reached your toes. “I haven’t- it’s just- not something I’ve had the time to do, or, or-” You bite your lip, drawing it between your teeth to stay yourself from saying anything more incriminating. The silence between you is stifling hot and awkward, and you cannot ignore how intently Julian’s looking at you, as if to see into your memory and confirm the fact for himself, that you’d never laid a finger upon yourself before.

He allows another moment to lapse in that sticky silence before asking, “Would you like to?”

You freeze, acutely aware of the twitch in your hand entwined with his, and the ache at your core that longs to be tended to. It’s not something you cannot do, you think to yourself. It’s  _allowed._  And if Julian seems wont to watch you squirm beneath him without doing a think about it himself, then what’s stopping you? You nod shortly, with all the defiance you can muster. “Perhaps.” Though the whisper is feeble, and lacking in resolution. 

Julian leans in close, nipping along the column of you neck and planting the occasional kiss. Settling his body to cover yours, overlapping in all the right places, he twines one of his hands with yours. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it,” He murmurs, sealing his lips around the shell of your ear. You shrug, brow furrowed. Until you met Julian, you never gave much thought to the carnal pleasures. His presence in your life has blossomed beyond what you saw as possible, in more ways than one, as you’re learning now.

“Consider it, then. A second of your time. Consider sliding your hand beneath the cool sheets, skating your hand over your stomach. There’s this dip where your hip runs to the inside of your thigh, you could trace some fingers along there, I’d imagine. Here, let me show you.” He’s unfolded your hand hold to extend your pointer finger, and has laid the pad of his finger atop it. He pulls his wrist down your chest, skimming your fingertip across the path he’s creating with his words. “Relax, relax.” He whispers against your neck, flattening his hand over your stomach until you let go of some of the tension holding your muscles taunt. His praise is hushed, smothered against your neck as he resumes in guiding your hand lower. You shiver when he crooks his finger, and yours as a result, into the tangle of golden hairs that rest above your center.  

“Julian!” You gasp, and clap your hand over your mouth in the same moment. You wince, and strain your ears for the first pounding of footsteps in the hall, the tread of guards you summoned with your wanton exclamation. But no other noise pierces the air. All is silent. Still, you finds your find whirring with the thought to calculate who might still be roaming the palace halls at this hour. Portia will have gone home to her cottage by now, not to return until daybreak, and even though she must be aware of Julian’s presence here, you don’t think you’d be able to stomach the humiliation if she was aware of the events that succeeded his arrival. Then there’s Nadia, whose chambers are on the far side of the palace, utterly out of earshot. Still, there could be a lone guard on patrol, an insomniac noble or wandering servant who could pass by your door at the exact right wrong time, hell, even Mercedes and Melchoir-

“I can hear you think,” Julian interrupts your line of thought, cupping your face with his unoccupied hand and dragging his thumb down your temples. You lean into him, despite yourself. He hasn’t removed his hand from hovering above your own, and the pad of his thumb is pressing down on the finger of yours that is a breath away from pushing into your clit. He allows a moment to elapse in silence, perhaps guaranteeing for himself that there aren’t guards swarming the door, before resuming the pressure on your finger. The digit dips between your folds and you choke back a gasp. The penetration is slight, but even still the sensation is blinding. Following the curve of your walls, Julian guides your finger higher, pressing just a bit deeper to add pressure against your clit.

“Another.” His breath at your ear is followed by his middle finger trapping yours, pushing it to rest at your lips, though he waits for your permission to insert it.

“Julian, It’s too tight.” You gasp, though the pressure building inside your stomach is strong enough that you insert another finger despite your own protestations, angling your hips downward to bear on the digits smothered on all sides of your inner walls.

After allowing some time for you to adjust to the stretch, Julian grabs your other hand and brings it to cover your breast. Tentatively, you slide your fingers over the areola, until Julian lays his hand over yours and squeezes, causing your fingers to pinch your nipple. Unbidden, a moan passes from your lips, and the finger circling  your lower lips stills in its arc. “Keep going,” He urges, moving his hand form your breast. Watching you with a leveled gaze, his hands slide the belt of his pants and the taunt stretch of fabric outlining his erection. He palms himself through the fabric, a slow, sedated motion, an afterthought to the main fixation of his attention.

“I’m beginning to think you are enjoying this as much as I am.” You laugh breathlessly, continuing to roll  your nipple between two fingers as it hardens to a peak.

“You have no idea.” He returns lowly, his gaze trailing from the hand occupied with your breast, along the stout rise and fall of your belly, to the occupation of your fingers scissoring themselves inside you. You bite hard on your lip to stifle another moan.

“No, I want them to hear us.” Julian protests, kissing the swell of your bottom lip that’s red and raw from the indent of your own teeth. The thought of being rushed by the royal guard, by Nadia herself, once a horror, now presents a rousing picture. It’s enough to spur your movement to finish yourself off, releasing against the bedspread below you.

“And there,” Julian pants, laying a kiss upon your forehead. “Is something for you to remember me by.”

“I love you so much.” You sigh against his temple. And you find that you no longer seem to care if every citizen of Vesuvia heard you utter the sentence. If your legs weren’t jellified you’d storm to the balcony and cry out to the country just how much you adore him. “You’ll stay until morning, won’t you?” You ask, twining your arms round his neck. The patter of rain outside has lightened, but not ceased, and you think it impossible to fall asleep on your own, now.

“Until morning.” He affirms, sinking into your embrace. His arms around you, heartbeat sealed against yours, it all feels like a dream. Thus, when you find him gone and the sheets cold the next morning, it seems only a nightmare from which you must wake. A delusion, sleepy and dull and enchantless. You must wake yourself soon.

 

You have not awoken for weeks.

Your back hits the bed in your darkened chambers, vertebrae popping with the release of what’s been pent up since that morning. Work for Nadia, work for Asra, for the shop, has left you drained, and you were in fact dismissed earlier than usual today. The lack of color must have been more prominent, or perhaps the sleepless bruises beneath your eyes.

Casting aside the fatigue and impatiently pushing aside your clothes and twisting out of your skirts, you attempt to conjure an image of Julian beside you. It’s been weeks since you last saw him. Going on a month since you’ve felt him. And since he’s left, the hole of longings inside you has only grown.

Skimming your hand down your stomach, you test your fingers against your outer lips only minimally before working them inside, twisting and curling, and while it dredges up a pulse in your clit to keep time to, it echoes with the same desperate sentiment of  _not enough not enough not enough._ The picture you keep of Julian in your mind becomes murky. It’s been too long. As determined as you are to recreate the methods he showed you the night he snuck into the palace, it doesn’t seem to matter much at all when he’s not there. When he’s out there, no way to tell, no way to see, that he’s doing alright, if he’s in a place where he too can pleasure himself to your image or if it’s grossly selfish for you to forge any attempt towards your own gratification when your love in in danger.

Your release comes, but it’s clouded and does nothing to uncoil the dark and unsound knots in your chest.

 _Something for you to remember him by_. That’s what he said to be the purpose of his deliberate unraveling of you. Did he teach you how to pleasure yourself because he knew he wouldn’t be around to do it himself for much longer? The thought is quite too much to bear. You groan, flipping onto your stomach and burying your face into the pillow.

 

Your frantic actions have tired you some, at least, and you feel yourself nodding off before long. You’re glad for it, too, for you may dream of him tonight. Perhaps that will lead you to find him in the upside-down wakefulness that you’ll arrive in the next morning.  _Something to remember him by._ The thought is laughable, now. As though there were anything about him that you’d be able to  _forget._


	7. Wavelengths (Julian x F!MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompts were: "Is that a challenge?" and "I'm not above begging."
> 
> Tags: F!MC

_“You will never know how completely I adore you.”_

You shiver at the words pressed into your neck, shaped by Julian’s chapped lips as he scores the column of skin with hot blossoms of kisses.

You grin, a lazy stretch of a gesture, paired with an airy laugh that lingers high and warm in your throat. “Is that a challenge?” You breathe, winding your arms around his neck. “Because I think I have an idea.”

You feel his brow rise against your temple as he slides the crest of cheek along yours, his breath ghosting over the corner of your lip, which tingles with want to be kissed. “Gods, yes.” He whispers before taking your lips with his own. You submit yourself to the tug and pull of his kisses, his lips shaping themselves to every angle of your mouth in a raw, searching path of exploration. His hands continue to slide along your waist and back. You cannot recall a moment that his hands haven’t been on you since you pulled him into one of the vacant boarding rooms of The Rowdy Raven.

Not that you were complaining, mind. Far from it, you found yourself keening into his parted lips, pushing yourself against his palms. Begging for the budding sense of relief, a release, as you felt a tension coil in the pit of your belly, tightening to the tune of his ministrations. You grapple for his still gloved hands -something really needed to be done about that- to palm your breasts, cup your center. He remains strikingly off target, however, opting instead to drag his thumbs along the risen indent of your ribs, the curve of your hip bone where thigh meets heat. His touch is intoxicating, but an inch off base.  _Almost_  over the edge.  _Not quite_  ecstasy.

“Julian,” You whine through gritted teeth, bucking against his hip in an effort to garner some friction where you need it. It’s a shameless gesture, a wanton indicator of your need for him, but you cannot find the cause to mask your want for him. He doesn’t deserve that.

“Patience, dear.” He murmurs against your temple, lowering himself a fraction further to the mattress, a delicious inch closer to you. He always kept himself propped on his elbows above you, as though as slender as he was, his weight may break you. His calves dangle over the short frame of the bed in an almost comic disproportion. You arch your back from the bedframe in a minute attempt to bring yourself closer to him. 

There was a budding inclination in your chest that was craving to be broken.

“I am not above begging.” You remind him, a smirk curling the corners of your lips. Julian draws back, meeting the laughter in your eyes with his own.

“Oh, but you are, darling. Don’t you realize?” He murmurs into the candlelit pocket of space between you, drawing his knuckle along the curve of your cheek. His ashen eye holds a bounty of adoration in its leveled gaze. You feel your blush darken, the numbed tingle of lightheadedness making it feel as though your head has left the pillow supporting it. “Any man would be absurdly lucky to find himself on his knees for you. If you have to beg for it, I’ve failed already. A queen does not ask; she receives.”

With that, he tucks his face into your neck, his eyelashes fluttering closed against the pulse that stutters to a rise against your skin. His hands slide along your arms before dipping to the curve of your waist, his wide hands cupping your ribcage. Your staccato breath pushes into his palms, making no secret the depth of your incline to his actions. You can feel the focus he’s putting on your reactions. As he moves his hands upward to glide over your breasts, thumbs teasing your nipples through your shirt, he seems to register every squirm and shiver at the push of his hand. You mewl once, and he pounces on the sound until its drawn into an echoing moan.

“More, Julian-”

“I know, darling.” He hushes you, then moving his hands from your breasts, down your stomach, until his fingers are just grazing the curve of your mound. It’s maddening, the way he draws his hand in such deliberately slow movements, as though he has the not enoughness of drawing you to a peak down to a science.

“What are you doing, now?” You ask airily, in response to the measured pace his fingers have taken on, skating along your outer lips, as if conscious of fitting your climax to a timetable.

“Making a map.” He replies, something distant in his voice, something distracted. “So I know what you like.”

“Is that so?” You reply, and attempt to sound coy, disinterested, if you can. But you breathlessness betrays you. “I think I’d like anything you do, Julian.” You can feel Julian’s lips shape into a smirk against your neck, just as you can then, suddenly, feel his finger slip between your folds to reach your clit, which soon begins to harden against the drive of his attentions.

You grab your breasts with both hands, grating your taunt nipples against your palms as the tension of it all crashes into you. There’s a lack of friction in your hands from being at a loss of anything to do with them, and the whole of your body aches for the same attention that’s being lavished upon your center. Sliding your hands from your breasts, up and down the plane of your stomach, raising your hands to card through Julian’s hair once or twice before cupping your breasts and pulling them outwards, causing you to whimper at the sensation of being stretched.

Julian’s lips still against your neck. The sound causes him to raise his head. “Let me take care of that.” He insists, narrowing his eyes with an air of dissatisfaction that you’d taken your pleasure into your own hands.

“You seem to be otherwise occupied at the moment.” You tease, though return your arms to your sides obligingly, trying to ignore the heated prickling feeling that doesn’t leave your skin. You slide your palms to the small of your back and lower your spine to the bed, not trusting yourself to keep them otherwise freed.

“That’s no matter.” He replies dismissively, raising his chest over your body and quick clamping his mouth around the swell of your breast without further warning. You cry out, throwing your head back against the pillows. His tongue winds circles around your breast, his lips forming an  _O_  that swells larger as he takes more of you into his mouth. He doesn’t lessen the pressure his finger is applying to your clit all the while he does this. If anything, his strokes become rougher, matching the frenetic movements of his tongue.

Your back arches from the bed, and before you can think to keep them there your hands reach for Julian’s hair, guiding his mouth to your other breast that has yet to be lavished with the same assiduity as its twin. He connects seamlessly to where you’ve guided him, warmth engulfing the peak while the other chills beneath the open air. The split of sensation wracks you, causing each pulse of your heart to come quicker, feel heavier, than the last.

 _“Julian,”_ You moan, winding your fingers tighter around his curls.

“Not enough?” He asks, tilting his head to skin his hooked nose along the line of your ribs, peppering kisses along the dewy stretch of skin that shudders beneath your intakes of breath.

“Yes. No. I-” You shake your head, finding it near impossible to think around the pulse in your head, resounding from the torrents of pleasure crashing into your body from all sides. “I want all of you.”

Julian  draws back, something deeper than arousal lingering in his heavy lidded gaze. His head is tilted to the side, questioning. “Do I really deserve that?”

You return his look of confusion with one of your own. “Yes. _Yes,_ Julian.” Your wrap your arms around his neck and draw him into an embrace, biting back a moan when your chest make contact. His fingers are no longer buried between your holds but hanging limply at his side. You can set aside your own pleasure, however, for this.

“You think we deserve each other?” He whispers, slipping slowly from the overdrawn confidence he’d been using only moments ago to render you weightless. You can only nod, perplexed by his doubt. Just a moment ago he’d been all over you, spurred into the action you’d encouraged. As keen as he was to pleasure you, he’d drawn back at the suggestion of reciprocation.

“I think we were made for each other.” You tell him. You’ve been meaning to tell him that for a while now.  

You move slowly, as to not startle him, and guide him onto his back. His head settles into the indent you’d made into the pillows, his arms falling to his sides, palms up. Swinging a leg over his hip and reaching for the ties of his trousers, you make quick work of the laces and tug them down just below his hips. He’s nearly erect, and it takes little more work with your own hands to bring him fully so, a bead of precum swelling at the tip.

“Are you sure about this?” He whispers, his Adam’s apple bobbing along his throat like a ship set upon a stormy sea.

“I was sure I wanted you from the moment I saw you.” You murmur, leaning forward to lay a kiss to the center of his chest, quelling the winds that wrack his torrid seas. Once stilled, you tilt your hips forward, aligning his heat to your heat, and surging forward to make a new wave.


	8. Don't Wake Me Up (Asra x GN!MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tags: Gender neutral MC, wet dreams
> 
> Prompt was: "You said my name in your sleep.”

Lately you’ve been spending more time with Asra. More time than your already interwoven schedules had allowed previous, even. Dawn, noon, and night, be it working at the shop, bumping elbows and shoulders behind the narrow counter space, strolling through the marketplace, with his hand resting on your arm to keep you from getting lost in the crowd, or retiring to your shared bed at night, bodies intertwined. It has been weeks since he’s last departed on one of his once frequent faraway trips, and while you once longed for his proximity, it does require an adjustment from being alone.

That must be why the dreams started.

Yes, you think to yourself, peeling your eyes open to focus on the slants of wooden beams lining the ceiling of your attic bedroom. The indents of your latest dream can still be felt, like bruises scoring your skin, leveling an ache just beneath the surface. Like hand prints, warm and pounding and a part of you.

You struggle to swallow a breath as you sit up in bed, frantic to untangle yourself from the sheets that stick to you and the dewy layer of sweat scalding your body. Pushing the pile of bedding to your side, you nearly let out a scream in your wound-up state when the pile moves back.

Asra rolls onto his side, lashes fluttering delicately over his cheekbones, though his eyes remain shut. He lets out a soft groan before turning his face back to his pillow undisturbedly. And the subject of your dreams becomes still in sleep once more.

A relieved sigh trickles past your lips, knowing that the sight Asra wakes up to will not be your flushed face and mussed hair, lips parted in thinly concealed physical overwhelm. Continuing to move as slowly as possible, listening to the soft pop of your muscles as your stretch out your legs as you set your feet on the cold floor. Upon standing, you can feel the cooling drain of liquid bearing down your thigh, the discomfort and shame of it a sour awakening to the rather vivid dream you’d just been having.

Stepping into the washroom adjacent to your and Asra’s bedroom, you loosen the ties of your sleepwear with one hand and reach for a cloth with the other, hoping the light stream of the faucet won’t be enough to awaken him. Settling down stiffly on the edge of the bathtub, you draw the cloth along your thighs, thankful for the contact of cold water to shake off the last vestiges of sleep that cling to you, taking you further away from the state of dreaming. Yet, you cannot deny yourself a second to close you eyes, allowing yourself to remember for one guilty moment.

Tonight’s dream had taken place in the front room of the shop, cast in that hazy yellow warmth that only dreams can project. The small of your back was digging into the counter, yet you felt no pain. What you felt were Asra’s lips, roving along your collarbone, your tunic cast aside some time ago. You felt his hands, Asra’s hands, working wonders between your thighs. His hips had pinned yours to the counter to keep you upright as a trembling overtook your legs, intensifying as you were brought closer to your peak. The whole time, he’d been murmuring your name, shaping his lips to it against your skin, pressing it into the purpling marks he left along your neck and chest.

The passage of time in dreams is a distant thing, yet you felt your orgasm come upon you all too fast, the release washing over you like in a much similar manner to how you developed feelings for Asra; unexpectedly, though quickly, more than you could ever have prepared yourself for. Your senses were overwhelmed by him, the tingling sensation his kisses had left to your skin, the pattern of his hands roving up and down your back, the sight of him dropping to his knees and collecting the flow of your essence from your thighs with his mouth.

You awoken, then, head and heart pounding. For all your lack of experience, you cannot fathom how these dreams got to be so vivid. You feel as though you’ve reemerged into adolescence, left with that sticky insecurity and the searching twitch in your palms. You have heard before that dreams of this sort were normal, a natural expression of a healthy libido. Such statements could not have been made by any persons whose subject of dreams was their boss, their housemate, their best friend. How could you be expected to function around Asra when just the night before you’d been entertaining a picture show of all the different ways he could bring you to climax?  _Normal_ was an overreach,  _normal_ was a fantasy.

Especially now that you’ve begun to wonder how a dream would compare to the real thing.

Before your mind can begin to wander with the impossibility of this newly found fancy, you hear Asra call out your name. Hastily washing your thighs and adjusting your sleep clothes, you throw the cloth into the hamper basket and slip back into the bedroom. “I’m here, I’m here.” You whisper, padding across the floorboards to slide back beneath the covers. Asra murmurs the shape of something, perhaps a question as to what you were doing out of bed. Tiredness overtakes him, however, and he’s asleep again before you can stutter a response. His hand, raised towards you, falls limp onto the space between your pillows. You can’t help an endeared smile from slipping over your face. He always was such a layabed. Only recently has this factor swung in your favor, even with the chore it made of getting him to open the shop in the early morning.

Your smile fades as you settle back into bed, keeping to the furthest side of the mattress to put some distance between yourself and Asra. Through the window set into the wall above your bed, you can see the moon set high, wreathed by a ring of stars. It is nowhere close to morning.

Yet, by the grace of every higher power you can name, the rest of the night is, for a change, dreamless.

* * *

The next day is a mess of distractions, resulting in you bounding up the stairs with the claim of exhaustion after a late supper. Late only because you’d let the soup boil over while your eyes were trailed on Asra, who had joined you in the kitchen after closing up the shop. He’d drawn his arms above his head and let out a moan while he stretched, a moan which was so acutely reminiscent of how he sounded in your dreams. You heard nothing else, notably not the bubbling of the soup or the splash it made on the stone tile upon the overflow, which sent the stove salamander skittering across the far side of the room, where he’d take nearly an hour to coax out from behind a shelf of herbs.

Once upstairs, you throw yourself onto the bed and draw the covers up to your chin. Sunset filters through the window, casting the room in a soft orange glow that burns against the back of your eyelids. You attempt to even out your breathing, though you end up faltering when you hear Asra’s footsteps ascending the stairs, the drawn out creak alerting you to some hesitancy in his step.

You feel the bed shift in weight as he settles on the space beside your hip. “Your skin is warm,” He comments, laying his palm against your forehead. His touch is enough to cause a flush to break out across your skin, coiling the hairs at the base of your neck. Your shrug out of his touch, raising your own hand to your forehead as if on the defensive.

“Just a fever, is all. You should sleep downstairs, so you don’t catch it.” You offer a weak cough, attempting to lower your voice so that is scrapes against your throat in a way that sounds sickly rather that lusty.

He looks hurt, which nearly shatters you. He has voiced the comfort he finds in sleeping next to you, particularly when the attempt to recall your memories leaves you with a pounding headache and fatigue. Asra tends to worry himself sick during these times, unable to shake the fear of losing you. You curse yourself for sending him to this place of worry now, and the pinch of guilt shatters your resolve to play things off. How long can you stand to hold him at arm’s length, anyway? Until the dreams stopped? What if they didn’t stop?

“Asra, I’m sorry but I-”

“No, I understand.” He says, offering a warm smile that doesn’t quite reach. “Can I bring you some tea? We have fresh meadowsweet in the kitchen.”

“I think I’d rather just sleep first.” You say, hoping your tone suffices an apology. Asra nods, and leans forward to press a soft kiss to your hairline before departing wordlessly, suspicions unraised.

You let out a sigh once the door closes behind him. He’s too understanding for his own good. But it’s in his best interest, really, if he wishes to preserve the tacit propriety, base decency, of yourself in his memory.

Rolling over the bury your face in the pillow to block out the light of the room, you draw the covers over your head and allow the tendrils of sleep to slip over you, dragging you down in the abyss of a dark and blank plain of unconsciousness.

 

You are not sure, there is no way to tell, how long you are asleep before the darkness shapes itself into something brighter, your bedroom at dawn. Morning light sheaths the room is rosy colors, framing the scene playing out before you.

 _Asra,_  and his fingers carding through your hair, angling your mouth closer to drink in the inexhaustable flow of tenderness that slides from your tongue to his. He tastes like something sparkly sweet, something you can’t get enough of.

 _Asra,_  and the slow rise and fall of his breath, the golden expanse of his chest open to your explorations beneath the parted curtain of his shirtfront. His nipples harden beneath your touch, causing his back to arch and your name to spill repeatedly from his lips.

 _Asra,_  and his hips tilt towards yours, drawing out the budding friction that pulls breathy moans from the pit of your stomach, matching his own to create a most lustrous symphony.

Asra. And he’s right in front of you, present and clear and just a little bit cold. You’re awake, now, and the haze of dreams no longer captures the light in his hair, rather, the crisp moonlight filtering through the windows shines on the unrepentive light of worry in his eyes. 

“I just came to check on you.” He murmurs, tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. “You were saying my name in your sleep.” If he can see the flush that has overtaken your face and neck, and he must, as though the room is dim his face is mere inches from yours, he does not comment on it. “Was it a nightmare?” He asks lowly, drawing his hand back to his lap. His shoulders are cloaked by a quilt, the one he keeps draped over the couch downstairs. So, he’d obliged your wish to sleep apart. You hope he wasn’t cold, sleeping down there alone. “Did I hurt you?” He prompts, when you neither shake nor nod your head to his question.

“No, no.” You say, snaking your hand from beneath the covers and clutching at his arm, vehement that he understands he has not caused any disturbance, not directly, anyway. Though he is the source of a nettlesome frustration kindling in the pit of your stomach, well, he cannot be _blamed_ for that.

“Have I done something else wrong, then?” You shake your head. Why must he place the blame on himself?  _You_  are the one who has wronged him. You are the one who could not keep your mind from wandering, and now you both must pay the price for it. Right?

It’s true that you tell each other everything. You used to tell each other everything. And, given the gaps in your memory, it was likely that he knows more about you than you know about yourself. The thought of stepping into confessional with him now is tempting, as he’s yet to fail in calming your worries in the past. But what if this truth is too much for him? He may not show his disgust outright. He may be silent, and in the days following he will retreat, until the distance between the two of you cannot be recovered. He may take to sleeping on the couch every night.

“You can talk to me.” Asra whispers, and he’s hoarse now, and pleading, and it is the only thing you can think of to assure him, to rise from the bed and kiss him, consequences be damned, if but for a moment.

Asra makes a startled cry from the back of his throat, but soon relaxes into your arms, wound around his neck, and your lips, shaped softly, yet hesitantly, to his own. He sinks into you, guiding you to lay back on the bed while he hovers above, hands skimming your arms, calves sliding along yours to tangle with your legs. His breath comes harshly through his nose, shock and urgency propelling him through soft, lingering kisses.

You force yourself to part from him only to catch your breath, keeping your arms around his neck to keep him close. “I’ve been dreaming about this every night.” You confess, twining your fingers in his snowy hair. “There was never a nightmare with you in it.”

Asra draws back slowly, and you wonder if he’ll judge you for your base, infantile desires. But there is no censure in his eyes. Instead, something closer to concern. 

“No dreaming. Remembering.” He speaks low and soft, his eyes flicking up and down your face to gauge your reaction. While the two of you have been working on filling the gaps in your memory, you could only tolerate slivers of information at a time. You can assume he’d withheld your shared history to stay the shock, or as he feared, unease and regret, the revelation may have brought on.

 _“Oh_. So we-”  _We were together. That is why the dreams felt so_   _real_. As the information settles in your whirring mind, you cannot find it in yourself to remain surprised. You cannot recall a time when you  _didn’t_  feel drawn into his personal orbit. The space around him was attractive to you, along with everything inside of it. The real revelation here, was discovering that Asra feels the same way.

“It was a wonderful dream.” You murmurs, unable to keep the smile off your face as you draw his lips back to yours. Any shame rolls off your shoulders, and any worry off of his, as you both tumble back onto the bed, closer than ever.

“It was,” Asra replies between kisses, drawing his lips along your jaw and down your neck, tracing the path of a once forgotten memory. “It is. It can be again.”

“Care to jog my memory?” You laugh, slipping your hands beneath his shirt to draw the fabric from his shoulders. You feel a familiar heat stir between your legs as the sight of his skin is revealed to you, paired with the excitement that your thoughts will soon become action.

“Of course.” Asra smiles against your neck, and as his hands set to work against your own clothes you allow your head to drop back against the pillows, remembering the soft hearted solace that his embrace brought you, awake and asleep.


	9. Blush (Asra x F!MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tags: F!MC, masturbation, teasing, oral sex

One week. That’s how long Asra’s trip was set to last.

Day one, you feel listless and bored, unwilling to prepare yourself for the reality of being apart from him for that long. Day two is much the same, but it leaves you curling around his pillow as you settle into bed, clinging to the sliver of solace it affords from his lingering scent. Day three has you antsy, tapping your feet and clenching and unclenching your fists as if you expect to be holding something, but whatever it is keeps slipping from your grasp. You may have warded off a few customers that day. You don’t notice. You miss him terribly.

Day four, and you wake slightly dizzy, skin flushed from a dream you’d been having. The morning light filtering through the windows seems tinted a shade deeper, infused the room with a dream-like air. It seems to carry you on a wave, your actions preceding your thought. You’d taken to wear his shirts to bed, and nothing else, but this sole layer seems suffocating now. You part the row of pearly buttons halfway, allowing the chill morning air to seep beneath the fabric and feeling your nipples stiffen almost instantly. Sliding your legs from beneath the heavy winter duvet, knowing you’d become overheated far too quickly beneath it, you draw your knees to your chest and wrap your arms around them, releasing a shaky sigh as you consider the current unrest of emotion stirring in the pit of your stomach. This is not a normal occurrence, and your apprehension is nearly enough to steer you in the direction of a cold shower and a mental reprimand. The week is halfway over, and these last three days will seem like nothing once he’s home again, won’t they? The question pulses in your mind, dissatisfying and soon dissolving into the dismissal of any weakly held conviction.

You dip your hand past the hem of Asra’s shirt, which reaches your mid thigh, and find a steady wetness already lining your outer folds. Any attempt at foreplay is an afterthought, and you grit your teeth against the resistance shaped around your middle finger as you slide it in to the knuckle. Your breath is fraught, though the endeavor to even it nudges your impatience and makes your breaths shakier than they were before.

You add pressure to your clit with your palm, settling most comfortably against the pillows with the vantage to thrust your hips in time with the movements of your wrist. You take hold of your breast with your free hand, your nipples stiff against your palm as work up some more friction. You feel the first flicker of impending release and hasten your movements to it, curling your finger inside you while switching your hand to the other breast.  Adding another finger, your impatience in seeking your release mounts higher. If  _he_  were here, it would not be taking this long.

“Asra,” You pant, the shape of him winking like a dying light against your closed eyelids, and for a second you can imagine him here, with you. His name is an unbroken stream cascading past your lips as you inch closer to release. “Asra, As-”

Then, from the doorway; “Is this your way of welcoming me home?”

Your eyes fling open at the sound of a voice- _his_  voice-as you scramble to tear your hands away from your body and gather the duvet to your chest to preserve what little modesty of yourself remains following the scene you’ve set before him.

Languidly leaning against the door frame, Asra takes in the scene as unhurriedly as if he were observing the shop at sunset, and taking in the golden dust motes that linger like specs of gold in the air. “And wearing my shirt, to boot.” He grins, Chesire like, folding his arms over his chest.

You bite down on your lip, dully noting the metallic gush that fills your mouth as you hasten to button your shirt- _his_  shirt-from where you’d left it undone just beneath your breasts.

“I-you said you weren’t going to be home for another three days.” You spit out, jerking the shirt fabric between your fingers with mounting frustration, boiling heatedly alongside your humiliation, as you fail to slip the small rounded buttons into their narrow holes.

You can feel yourself begin to wilt at the sound of Asra’s footsteps crossing the narrow distance between the two of you, and nearly let out a yelp when you feel the bed tip towards his weight, seating himself at your hip. “Can’t help it that I missed you, can I?” His hands reach for the shirt, you assume to do what your trembling hands cannot, to button you to the collar before he flees from the room to let you stew in your own shame. However, when you force your eyes open you find he’s been unbuttoning the shirt the rest of the way instead, freeing the last few buttons that are bunched up around the vee of your thighs, though not yet parting the fabric to expose the skin beneath.

Asra’s hands run down the top of your thighs, below the shirt’s hem, before pausing at the knee. “I have been listening to you moaning my name since I walked through the door.” He mutters, and there is a steaming quality to his voice, a fever, almost. “Though all the same I dare not assume. Do I have your permission to continue?”

You screw your eyes shut and mumble a weak  _yes,_  burying your face in your hands. Your thoughts are spiraling, battering in conflict between the fear that he’d turn away from your actions, and the reality setting in that he intends to do anything but.

“I can hardly hear a word you’ve said.” You can  _hear_  his smile. He always has adored teasing you. He coaxes you to uncover your face, though you keep your gaze pointedly dropped to your lap. Asra laughs lightly and draws closer, his nose skimming along your jaw. “You weren’t this shy earlier, now were you?”

“There is a big difference between then and now.” You gasp as he teases the shell of your ear between his teeth, his tongue tracing down to your earlobe.

“Oh? And what’s that?” He asks, kissing his way to the corner of your mouth, lingering, just out of reach.

 _“You.”_  It all comes back to him. Aptly satisfied, for now at least, he takes your mouth in a bruising kiss, entreating a soft moan from you, which only serves to deepen your blush as the wanton rise reaches your ears.

“You wanted something of me, then?” He whispers, and the husky quality of his voice, so close to your ear, sets a shiver down your spine. You nod. “But you won’t tell me what that is?” You shake your head. “I’ll just have to guess, then.” He notes lightly, drawing himself to hover over you, his elbows framing your face. “Do you want me to kiss you?” He asks, as conversational as though he were exchanging passive remarks with a customers downstairs in the shop. You nod quickly, unable to match his act of indifference. “Do you want me to touch you,” His palms skate along the slope of your waist beneath your shirt, drawing close to your ribs until his hand meets your breast, allowing it to fill his palm.  _“Here?_  Or,” His hand then drops, fingertips skimming the shallow between your hips until met with a flaxen patch of pubic hair. He flips his hand over a twines a curl around his finger, before parting the hairs with his thumb to gently nudge your outer lips.  _“Here?”_

You nod again, to which he shakes his head lightly in return, decidedly amused. “I need you to tell me where, my petal.”

“B-both.” You stammer, fisting your hands in the sheets drawn around your hips. “Anywhere. Everywhere.”

“I see.” He nods, solemn. “Does that mean you want me to get you off? Use your words, now.”

“Yes, gods, please,  _Asra-”_ He silences you with a swift kiss, swallowing the dizzy tumble of words from your lips. He lowers himself onto the bed, and you let out a cry into his mouth once your chests make contact, your tight nipples meeting the hard plain of his toned abdomen.

“I think I have an idea of things now.” He smirks, drawing away and separating you from that delirious friction of his heated skin against yours. “Now, lay on your stomach. Let me take care of you.”

You shift positions on the bed as he instructs, though your movements are stiff and jerky as your roll over onto your stomach, propping your chin on your folded arms.  _“Relax,_  petal.” Asra whispers against the back of your neck, parting your hair over your shoulders in order to plant a row of kisses at the high notch of your vertebrae, just above the shirt’s collar. Why hasn’t he removed you shirt yet? Although, a part of you is relieved to be left with this final piece of modesty, however thinly veiled the pretense of  _modesty_  may be given the current circumstances.

You feel the bed shift at Asra moves towards its end, by your feet. He raises a hand to your ankle, skimming up your calf and thigh, pausing to trace the seam where you thigh meets your ass with his thumb, calluses catching over the smooth skin. “You are so beautiful,” He whispers, indenting his thumb to the measure of his words, slowly edging your shirt up to the small of your back.

The bed dips again, and his lips are at your ear again. His warm breath, the scent of spice and someplace far away yet familiar, fills your senses. No more is this a fantasy, a lonely and passing thing that you’ve conjured to get yourself through another night alone. He’s enchantingly real and intoxicatingly close. “I need you to get up for me, please.” He murmurs, drawing his hands along your arms, raising you to hold your arms straight, palms face down on the bed, parallel to your spread knees. You dare glance down the space beneath you, worrying your lip at the sight that makes your head spin with the implication of your current position.

Your breasts hang freely, stiff at attention, framed by the rumpled curtain of your shirt on either side. Between you can just see the gleam of arousal seeping through the bush of hair between your legs.  _A debauched sight indeed._  Through the frame of your legs you can see Asra sitting back on the bed behind you, still fully clothed. Has the man even taken his boots off yet?

It isn’t fair, you think, that you’re posed so exposedly and he’s yet to remove any base article of clothing. The thought, however, stalls in your mind as his arms slides around your thighs, holding you to position. You gasp when his mouth meets the vee of your ass, shaping a kiss to the skin there. He makes a slow trek down the center slope or your bottom, using his thumbs to part your cheeks as his explorations dip further. You release a strangled whine when his lips pass over the puckered flesh of your asshole, leveling into silence, your mouth agape. Drool collects at the corners of your mouth as you regain your voice, and with it,  a symphony of low, lyrical moans tumbles from your lips from the base of your throat.

The sensation of being spread as his mouth reaches your dripping folds sets your thighs quaking. You plant your knees and palms firmly into the bed, ruching the sheets between your fingers. Asra traces spirals onto the back of your thighs, slowing for a moment as you come down from your trembling. A brief respite, and Asra resumes, as he runs his tongue along your tumid vulva. He’s so close to your clit, the whole of you focus is tuned to the fact. He’s murmuring low passages of phrase, indistinct and partially to himself.  _“You’re stunning like this.”_ is one snatch of praise you manage to catch, and it sets your face aflame in blush.

Your arms and legs begin to shake again as his mouth pushes insistent against you, his words swallowed by his own ministrations. Your arms buckle and fold, and you find yourself face first in your pillow at the same moment Asra’s mouth latches onto your clit. Your cry of pleasure is mostly absorbed by the pillow, but the caress Asra rounds along your hips tell you he heard it, the brief squeeze and the vaguest shape of a smile against your swollen lips. His fingers curl around the crest of your hip bones, using the leverage to angle your ass higher and take you further into his mouth. Your spine is curved sharply, the stretch of it dragging a glorious sensation along your back, like you’re being struck with a shower of stars. And at the epicenter of this cosmic fall is Asra, anchoring you among the downfall with his touch alone.

His work on your clit has brought you to the brink of orgasm, searing around its edges like a blazing, falling star. Your moans have become eclipsed by your wordless shudders, like a scream that cannot be heard in space. You’re thankful Asra is so otherwise occupied to not be asking you to use your words, as a single coherent phrase could not possibly be shaped by your lips in your current state.

His hands skate across your belly, drawing you up slightly from where your chest is pressed flat into the sheets so he can reach your breasts. Squeezing them tight, rounding them against each other, your attentions are torn between his thumbs abrading your nipples and his tongue circling your clit. He draws away from it briefly to kiss a line down your seam, tilting his head as though imitating a proper kiss.

A shattered cry breaks wordlessly into your pillow when, without warning, his tongue divides between your folds, stoking the furthest reach of your sex, your weeping essence gathering on his lower lip and dripping down his chin. Your orgasm shoots through your core at this, whiting out your vision, the erosion of all sense and thought as you’re sent through the sky in a blinding flash of warmth and light. Your hips drop to the bed, your arms splayed on either side of you.

Asra gives one last appreciative caress to your ass before joining you at the head of the bed, settling on his side to curl himself around you. He takes your hand and peppers kisses along your wrist as the waves of your orgasm recedes from a place of white noise and supernovas.

“Tell me, can I expect to return home to such a lovely, lovely sight after my next trip?” He asks, slinging an arm over your waist. A fresh blush overtakes your skin, creeping up from your neck. Asra smiles, a wide and sated stretch, before leaning in to press a featherlight kiss to your stuttering pulse point. “I tease you only because I care, you know. I care for you so deeply.” He adds, his voice detaching itself from his token playfulness and taking on the same deep, breathy quality as to when he’s sprouting testament to your beauty while his mouth is buried between her thighs.

“I know.” A shy smile creeps at your lips as you turn your face to his chest, returning his embrace and entangling your legs together. Fatigue settles over your body, still pulsing with the aftershocks in tune to Asra’s heartbeat. You allow the anchor of sleep to drag you under, cuddling closer to your love. Somehow, impossibly, you find that it feels as though he never left at all.


	10. Alone and Sublime (Asra x MC)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This is a spilling of the heart,  
> With no intent to fall apart.”  
> -Alone and Sublime, Mother Mother
> 
> Tags: GN!MC

_ A weekend getaway. _

The words themselves held their own rapture, which was made all the more enticing by the man speaking them, his arms wrapped around your middle and chin propped on your shoulder, stirring the hairs at your temple with the promise of the very thing you’ve been craving: solitude.

Your quarters at the shop, shoulder to shoulder with the homes beside it, couldn’t be considered the sum of privacy. At any given moment, life was happening all around them. The cry of a child from the house across the way, the scrape of moving furniture or the laughter ringing out from a party, right next door or far down the street. It was a comfort, early on, to feel that you were never truly on your own. When your memories were scarce, a sense of security was less so, and it helped to know a call for help would be heard, if ever necessary. It had yet to be, and not after long you began to relax and exchange a smile with your neighbors. 

The fault in proximity revealed itself eventually, as faults are wont to do. While you were sympathetic to the parents of those crying children, the noise drilling into your ears in the early hours of the morning was not the sort of wake up call you’d prefer. And cheers of revelry are a joy when you’re apart of them, there’s much less amusement when the party has been raging for hours, after you’ve nearly finished an all-nighter making potions for the shop, doubling your supply for a cure you’re certain the merrymakers will be in need of come next morning. While you were guaranteed to find at least one friendly face in the stream of shoppers that trailed in front of the shop on their morning errands, it would be a blessing to open the door some dawn and find the streets empty, find yourself alone.

Alone, save for one other.

“It’s quiet here, isn’t it?” Asra says from beside you, trailing ahead to explore the small living space, which doesn’t seem to have changed much at all since your last visit, as long ago as that seems. The desert is always changing, save for this abode, a pocket of  _ sameness  _ right in the middle of shifting sands. You wonder if there’s something magical about this place. “Eerie, almost, don’t you think?” He calls over his shoulder, studying the collection of potted succulents on the kitchen windowsill.

“I think it’s nice.” You say absently, looking around for a lantern to break up some of the dusk that shadows the desert abode in slants of black and blue. The sun has been setting earlier and earlier, it feels like time is passing quicker by the minute. You have to remind yourself that you only just arrived, and Asra won’t be taking you back to the shop, back to that cluster of noise and light, anytime soon.

“I never said it wasn’t nice.” Asra grins, slinking towards you and wrapping his arms around your waist. You forget your search for light in the moment, your worry about time. Your eyes have adjusted to the dim darkness, and you realize the light in his eyes is enough. 

You tuck your head beneath his chin, sinking further into his embrace. His thumbs draw lazy circles on the small of your back, you can hear the slight shift of the cloth, the pattern of your breathing as it slows to match his. You close your eyes and revel in the quiet, breathing deeply and marveling over the stillness of the air. No peddlers trailing up and down the walk outside the door, no children weaving through a crowd, calling out to be heard by their classmates up ahead, no parents to shush them.

You can  _ feel  _ the silence. There’s not another soul for miles.

“It’s like we’re  _ really  _ alone.” You breathe, and Asra’s eyes flare like a struck match. His arms tighten around your waist, and you allow yourself to be brought closer to him. You allow him to curve his palm over your cheek, tilt your head and align your lips with his. He’s only a breath away, now. 

“And what shall we do about that?” His voice is a purr, it stirs the stray hairs around your face, momentarily disturbing the stillness of the moment. On behalf of a reply, you close the miniscule distance between your lips. Asra responds immediately, lifting you in a twirl as he grins into your mouth and dives into your kisses.

You don’t know how much time has passed when he’s laying you on the bed, refusing to break from your lips as you both sink into the pillowy cushions, raising your back only so his hands can reach the clasps and ties on your tunic and draw them away, discarding them irrelevantly on the floor. His fingers skate over your bare skin, a maddening, distant touch.  _ “Asra, please.” _ You whisper into his shoulder, your arms wrapped around his neck, one hand fisted in his snowy curls. He teases you with several more strokes until his grip becomes insistent, speaking to his own growing need. His lips drop from your draw to your neck, tracing over you collarbone between slipping down to your breasts, while his thumbs trace the shallows of your hip bones. 

You bury your face into his shoulder when he mouth closes over your nipple, a series of broken moans falling from your lips as though you’d forgotten the wonders that mouth of his is capable of, after all he’s done to prove it.

“You don’t have to cover your mouth anymore.” He says into your neck, layering the column of skin with quick and fervent kisses.

You bite your lip, struggling against the reflex, before dropping your hand to your side. When your eyes flutter open you catch the corner of Asra’s grin, a moment before he hand shoots out to capture your wrists and pin them above your head, atop the pillow. He shifts over you, his knee coming to dig into the bed beside your hips, dropping you further into the mattress, a distance which he closes before you can whine in complaint. 

You finish undressing each other in a matter of seconds, a haphazard affair that results in a fit of giggles when buttons catch on stray threads, and there are layers upon layers to get through. The laughter dies on your lips, however, when your bodies align, skin to skin, and you can feel the push of his breathing, the pulse of his length against your thigh.

When he enters you, time stops.

His thrusts are slow, then fast, and in this blur of moments it’s difficult to discern the length of his movements, how long he spends kissing one shoulder before moving to the next, how long the continuous stream of praises has been flowing from your lips. The brink he’s bringing you to seems infinite, yet, when you come, it feels the buildup has been a blink, and you remain wanting him. 

Asra shifts above you, turning onto his side and pulling you into embrace as you catch your breath. He’s still hard against your leg, and suddenly you’re reminded just how much time you have to spend holding him like this, being held.  _ A weekend getaway.  _

“I love you, Asra.” You don’t allow your voice to drop to a whisper, a hushed murmur into his neck. Your voice is clear and strong in the pocket of space you’ve created, just the two of you, and all the stars.

Asra’s mouth splints into a beaming smile. He raises his hand to your lips, swiping his thumb over your bottom lip, an amazed inspection of what produces the sounds he loves the most, what says _I love you,_ the most beautiful sound in the world.


End file.
